Rakushinpu Monogatari: Behind The Savage Curtain
by lyrainthedark
Summary: What began in the rain continues in the winter snow. White turns red, and memory vanishes in purpose. Part Two, a sequel to Rakushinpu Monogatari: The Inu's Entwining Bride.
1. Chapter 1

I.

Obsession

Sesshomaru follows Kagome into the snow and only then knows just how much time has passed him by. Whole seasons, while in the solitary silence of her web he lay ensnared. She wears dark colors now, stands out sharply against the snow, and he knows suddenly that the red she wore in the beginning was only an enticement. A trap, just like the scent of her. It crackles near him even now, cinnamon-lightning, the spice that truly burns.

_An impossible thing is true once more. You, woman, no longer woman, you captured me when I am one that cannot be kept. _

It has taken many days of promises, but now he is free of the house that contained him, and she is going to bring him to the beginning of things. He could leave her – run from her…or at least, he thinks he could. Instead he seeks to bind her to him more firmly. Once before she did something impossible, nearly broke him – now he thinks the omen of her presence is a signal not to be denied.

_Like the first time, something more than human limits is within you. It embraces my desire. _

She leads him through the snow, and Sesshomaru watches the distortion of her presence as she moves. Too quick now, each step a darting movement. Too many fingers, too many fingers gripping the edge of her cloak. The perfect pupils in the glittering ornaments that adorn her hair stare back at him as he trudges along behind her, mocking and meaningless.

Where is he going? Where is she leading him? The beginning she says, because he wants to know where this change began…and he has his own suspicions, but do they even meaning anything?

_The beginning is far from here, and not in this direction_.

But perhaps what she thinks of and what he thinks of, they are not the same...yes, that is the way of it, that is the way it is meant to be. Where she begins to her_self_ is not the same as the moment in which he first found her.

The only one to live when he wanted her dead…even now. Even now, though it is no longer the poison of his own scent that taints her. _I would taint her…_

And in that is the start of his own awareness. _That is where we go_. To the moment when Kagome, the woman, became _something other_. To the place where she broke herself into the new nature he does not dare to name before her. Not out loud –not where she can hear him.

_Rakushinpu. Jorogumo._

But it confuses him, because the further they go the more deeply they descend into a pit of stink and aggravation that he does not understand.

_Inuyasha? How is it…that the smell of _you_ is here? Inuyasha…_

It has been a long time since word came to him that his brother was dead.

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><p>AN: Another sequel in progress, but this one is nearly finished, so expect one bit each day until it's complete! If you didn't note in the summary, this is the sequel to Rakushinpu Monogatari: The Inu's Entwining Bride, and will make much more sense if you read that one first!

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	2. Chapter 2

II.

Shattered Mirror

Kagome hunches her shoulders as she walks – all of them. She wraps her arms around her body, wraps her cloak around her body, and stares spiteful at the fingers gripping the edges of the silk. Dozens of fingers, _dozens_ of fingers.

She is almost laughing, sense drowned by madness and terror, but she swallows the sound. If she gives in she will stop walking, and if she stops walking then this path will be closed to her again…maybe forever. She does not want it to be closed to her. For Sesshomaru's sake, because he has asked it of her, and because the agony of her own memory is the most potent seed she can plant if she seeks to keep him - and she does. _She does_.

It is no mystery to her, it is only madness. The taste and scent of him are his own, but everything else is an echo and the echo is all that remains to her of love. _Love me, love me, yes, love me forever. _The thought, the desire, defiles her – corrupts him – she cannot but revel in it.

She is _youkai_ now.

The laughter is within her still though she denies it, a bright-building thing. It catches at her throat, building its webs across the trembling beginning of vibrations in her larynx, but like him, she keeps it captive, will not let it free.

Not now, not ever, but especially not now.

The snow falls thick over them, but it is long past the time when such concerns could move her, and he was never bothered at all. She resists the urge to look back over her shoulder at him, to turn and face him…if only he had not taken back his eyes!

If only she could have dared their stare to steal them a second time.

_I am weak, I am weak before him. But he is mine, and he must be mine and stay mine. _And, tinkling faint as chimes behind the mask of a thousand other thoughts is the blinkered remnant of her conscience, laughing at her. Deeper and deeper into the darkness, further and further along the path.

If there was a time when she could have turned back, it is behind her…even if behind her is in front of her now. She can already smell it. Cloying odors, death and decay, flesh left without the rites of burial. Flesh that has too much of the immortal about it to disappear.

Flesh and blood – if they are speaking to her now, all those terrible scents, what will they be saying to _him_? And despite herself, all promises, all good intentions, she turns and looks over her shoulder, turns and sees the red-glow growing in the corners of his eyes.

Whatever conversation he has with those odors, it is silent – but the signs of it are all over his face.

Then – the clearing.

The house.

The door.

_Blood._

It crashes down over her, a tsunami of memory, the pressure-wave of the eruption almost too much to bear.

She reaches out to open the way, but it is his hand, closing over her fingers, that lets in the light of day over what remains of her shame and agony. And then he is laughing – _laughing_ –

The path down into the darkness has been before her, and until now she has walked the whole, long way. Now she falls, rolls into the terrible valley, fast and faster her descent along the invisible road.

No coming back – no turning round – no hiding place.

Part two, as promised! More tomorrow, and

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	3. Chapter 3

III.

Once Upon A Time

It is all there before him, in the dust and rusted silence. Everything Sesshomaru suspected – but then what is suspicion in the face of such a perfect truth as this?

The laughter comes bubbling up from the deepest well of his being, the undeniable place where a soul should be – the scrabbling Inu, red-eyed, glorying in all despair.

This is the most perfect terror he has ever seen.

The only thing that evades him now is the joy that would be his if what is before him, he had caused. If he could only claim responsibility –

But no.

_It was the woman, no longer woman. It was Kagome, Jorogumo. _

His brother's flesh is scattered from the door inward, and the red of old blood gone cold, gone rotten, only its stain and its scent left behind. Youkai do not decay like the flesh of this world, but his brother was half human and that half has made him easy to break, easy to unmake.

Inuyasha is becoming one with the wood, one with the house in which he tried to build the life that destroyed him. The grinning blankness of his skull rocks in the wind that comes through this place, through chinks in the wood-work that have long gone unrepaired…soon, the second son of the Inu no Taisho will vanish from this world forever.

Sesshomaru bends and takes the one thing that remains, unsullied: _hi-nezumi no kawagoromo_.

The robe of the fire rat…perhaps he will give it to his own sons one day.

He knows then why she's brought him here.

_Not because she is giving in, not because I asked. Because perhaps this was what was meant to be all along. _

_Because only I could ever be strong enough to love her._

He leaves his brother behind and goes out into the snow. Kagome is waiting.

"Did you kill him for an offering, Kagome? Did you know even then you would come to be mine?"

She takes a step toward him, swaying, and he can't see her face beneath the shadow of her hood. Only her lips are visible as they move, shaping the red-dark words.

"No, no, no." And then it comes, as he knows it must. "_Yes_."

He reaches out for her, and she comes pliant into his arms, gives in to his embrace and lets him kiss her, bite her – not her kiss this time, no slow ensnarement. Canine intentions lavish themselves on her mouth, her throat, her shoulders, teeth seeking blood and his special poison burning deeper. She goes to the ground beneath him eager and easy, as if expecting it – yes, she is expecting it.

Her eyes are bright, a sharp reminder of the woman she was…but her smile is too wide, too sharp, and she clings to him with too many hands when he touches her. When he touches her, Kagome's every breath becomes a rapturous sound.

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><p>AN: Day three, part three...more tomorrow!

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	4. Chapter 4

IV.

Happily Never After

This is what Kagome has wanted, needed – this is all, the everything, nature and essence fulfilled in touch and tongue and unresisted temptation. Sesshomaru comes down over her with no gentleness, the claws on his fingers tearing through her cloak, her robes. There is still laughter on the curve of his mouth when he kisses her, and the taste of it is a bitter cure for many things that have tainted her mind.

_I am defiled_.

She has known, but she _understands_ it now. That is the heart of the bitter flavor. The next kiss is deeper, sweeter, his tongue licking at her tongue, the roof of her mouth. He bites at her lips with sharp teeth and she feels the poison enter her blood while he takes from her the taste that he requires. His mouth moves from her lips to her throat, chases the line of tension there, and every kiss he gives her is sharp and burning. Every kiss he gives her is_ just right_.

_Take more from me – deliver me – destroy whatever is left of me. _

She will be something new born under him. Already, she can feel that awakening being come to life inside her. By the time she is naked under him, naked as she has been before no one since this shape took her for its own, she knows that the end of this will make her someone who is no longer Kagome – someone who has no claim to that nature, that being.

_Make of me a memory. _

"Sesshomaru – Sesshomaru."

She pushes at his clothes with three pairs of hands, rises eager and moaning to his touch, fingers and their sharp claws plucking at her nipples, teasing them ripe and hard.

"Give in, Kagome, and there is no going back."

His eyes are bright as rubies, bright as blood. The snow falls white behind him, and the night grows black as coal beyond that, but now, as _then_, Kagome knows only red. She laughs at the very idea of what he suggests. No going back? There has been no going back for a very long time.

_Only now I will cross all the way. The bridge of blood. I will leave everything behind him._

She shrugs out of her cloak, out of her robes, out of her _kosode_ and _koshimaki_. She feels the snow melting on her skin, flickers of chill that burn momentarily bright, bright as stars, and vanish without other effect.

Sesshomaru is the one who pulls the ornaments from her hair, breaks them in half and throws them across the snow. When he turns to look at her again, she reaches for the sash that ties his robes closed and pulls it open. He studies her, hunter lurking in the crimson shadow of his eyes, before he tosses away every bit of silk that stands between them.

Then he bends and his mouth is on her again, tongue flickering over her nipples, down across her breasts.

The snow is cold, and the snow is hot – the snow remembers for her, and as it remembers it washes everything away, everything. Even the memory, even the regret. The snow is cold, and the snow is hot…until it melts under her and the cold ground stabs at her shoulders, prods her back with all that is irregular and all that should not be.

But this world is not a world of _should _or _should not_. It is only the world that is, and now she understands.

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><p>AN: Apologies for the delay - my internet service has been out, and indeed still is. It will be back with a new (and hopefully better) provider February 5th, so until then, be soothed by these words, and know more is coming!

Please Review!


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